Big Sailor pants...

So we checked the weather yesterday and, with the exception of a few rain showers, it looked good for leaving in the morning. This morning we checked the weather again - same forecast. The sky, however, suggested that maybe someone didn't have the weather picture completely in focus. The big puffies building to our north and east sure looked to me like something that might ride along the edge of an incoming cold front. But I have been feeling like a real weather weenie lately, hiding while part timers are out galloping around. There were big patches of blue sky and, well, there was the forecast. Time to put my grown up sailor pants on and go sailing.

Red in the morning...

We did need fuel and water. The fuel dock opens at 0900. We got there around 0830 to start filling up the water tanks while waiting on the fuel guy. Crew from a charter company had one of their boats on the dock as well, getting it tanked up for the next customer. They caught our lines and we stood around talking for a few minutes. As usual they made fun of the madman in the White House, subtly suggesting that America looks a bit like the largest collection of fools in the civilized world. And, as usual, we really did try to explain that the man isn't all that popular, that most of us didn't vote for him, that we were all hoping he wouldn't be as bad as we feared, and we are pretty disappointed (though some of us not very surprised) that he is even worse. But, what are you going to do?  (Well, you could get on a boat and go visit some place that hasn't lost its collective mind yet. Something the dock guys all agreed sounded like a pretty good idea.)

They went to start pumping fuel into their big cat while we started filling the water tanks. I kept looking at the sky, something I had been doing since we had pulled up the anchor. The blue patches of sky were filling in rapidly, and the big puffies were crowding together pushing a clear wall of lower clouds out ahead of them. Rain shafts fell in the not-too-distant distance.

The wind, which had been calm and made for an easy docking, picked up and pushed Kintala hard against the pilings. Then she healed over as the wind gust hit and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees in half as many minutes. Every monohull in the harbor slewed through 100+ degrees of heading, then leaned back hard against their rodes. The cats all sailed about a bit, apparently confused as to just which way the wind was blowing, but eventually figured it out, got twisted bows into the wind, and leaned back hard against their rodes.

If it looks like a cold front...

With the first gusts fading we muscled our way off the dock. Deb headed us out into the harbor. I took off my grown up sailor pants and put on my foulies. The anchor went overboard and pretty much landed in the same hole it left when we pulled it up this morning. Sixty feet of chain went out as well, none of it piling up as the wind blew us backward. I locked the gypsy, Kintala leaned back and set her own hook without any help from the Beast. I played out a few more feet of chain and set the snubber, which  stretched out all of its own and then sprung us back in a little. Welcome to auto-anchoring.

As I type this, the visibility is a mile or so in rain and the wind is moaning through the rigging.
We will check the weather again tomorrow.

Weather windows

The journey back to Kintala was aided by my Brother-in-law and Sister-in-law. They drove in from PA to meet us at Oak Harbor so we could drop off the car. We then went off for dinner with family from that half of the family. The next morning we stuffed their car with the stuff we had stashed in the hotel room and headed to Oriental.

The plan was to have them stay with us on the boat for a couple of days but, alas, boats move. As much as we like this town, boats at the piers near the bridge in Oriental will move a lot in surprisingly little wind. In less than five minutes of sitting in the cockpit my sister-in-law decided that staying on the boat would not be an option. They took a room at the marina. A very nice room for a very reasonable cost. The total package was good enough to keep them here an extra day, so we all had a kind of mini-vacation.

My brother and sister-in-law and yes he does look like Santa :)

They left Oriental yesterday morning. Normally we would have started in on a couple of boat projects with the idea of being ready to head south at the first available weather window. Unfortunately, as stated, the piers here are not very well protected. (Unless one manages to snag a spot at one of the free docks.)

On our first day back, Kintala suddenly danced, swung, and rolled against her lines like she was trying to get away from something. Deb and I both popped up on deck to see what was going on (along with virtually every single person who was on a boat at the time) but there was nothing to see. No mega yacht had just passed through throwing a monster wake. There was no tsunami sucking the water out of the bay, airliner crashing into the harbor or tractor truck falling off the bridge. Still, it was a serious hit. The power boat on the face dock just off Kintala's bow got tossed into the pilings so hard that the rub rail was split and the starboard side upper hull was cracked. Ugly.

We never did figure out what caused it.

Now, two days later, the boat is still dancing and rolling.  Truth to tell, after a couple of weeks on the hard we haven't gotten our sea (pier) legs back yet. Sitting and reading (or typing) is not a problem. Well, not a big problem. We do get off the boat to "stretch" pretty often, but that is only because we have been sitting too much for the last couple of weeks. Right? Hanging upside down in the bilge to install a new gray water tank or to find a small oil leak under the Beast? That will pretty much ensure we will be getting off the boat to do more than "stretch".

It may take a weather window to get us ready for a weather window.

Then we can get started south once again.